---
title: "The Concentration Factor among the Seven Awakening-Factors — The Sixth Factor, Ripened Into"
author: "釋慧鏡 (Shi Huijing)"
series: "Six Practice Gates, Volume 5 — SAMĀDHI: From the Pāli Jhāna to Silent Illumination and the Huatou · Part II · The Āgama View"
series_short: "SAMĀDHI"
volume: 5
paper_id: "SAMADHI-P07"
paper_number: 7
part: Part II · The Āgama View
part_number: 2
date: 2026-06-01
version: "1.0"
license: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
---

# The Concentration Factor among the Seven Awakening-Factors
***The Sixth Factor, Ripened Into***

*中文主題：定覺支在七覺支中之位——水到渠成的第六支*

**Abstract**

Is the "concentration awakening-factor" (*samādhisambojjhaṅga*) among the seven awakening-factors the same concentration as the "right concentration" of the noble eightfold path, or a second and different thing? Contemporary meditation circles argue endlessly over whether concentration is to be forced out by effort or let to come of itself, and this chapter holds that the dispute asks in the wrong direction. The concentration awakening-factor is not a deeper focus willed directly into being; it is the fruit of a sixth factor that arises of itself once mindfulness, investigation, energy, rapture, and tranquillity have ripened in sequence and the mind has come to ease. Working from the causal sequence of the *Saṃyukta Āgama*'s discourses on the awakening-factors (713, 810, 714, 729), from the precept-rooted chain of the *Madhyama Āgama*'s *Discourse on What Is the Purpose*, and from the grammatical witness of the Pāli — its "arising of itself by natural law, in due sequence" (*dhammatā*) and the medio-passive voice of *samādhiyati* — the chapter argues that concentration is *undergone*, not *manufactured*. Folding together three statements of the treatises — the awakening-factors are exclusively supramundane (Kośa), the prior-or-posterior determining criterion of the path-factors (Vibhāṣā), concentration is a single entity under five names (Kośa) — it reaches, by synthesis, the conclusion: one and the same concentration, serving as right concentration, spans the mundane and the supramundane; serving as the concentration awakening-factor, it is purely supramundane — the coordinate decides the function. The load-bearing image accordingly turns from the previous chapter's static "place" to a dynamic "sequence": the channel forms once the water has arrived.

**Keywords:** the concentration awakening-factor (定覺支 / *samādhisambojjhaṅga*), the seven awakening-factors (七覺支 / *satta bojjhaṅgā*), awakening-factor (覺支 / 覺分 / *bojjhaṅga*), right concentration (正定 / *sammā-samādhi*), ripened into (水到渠成), mindfulness of breathing (*ānāpānasati*), the calming triad (止息三支), restlessness (掉舉), tranquillity (猗息 / *passaddhi*), purely supramundane (唯無漏), natural law (依法性 / *dhammatā*), the coordinate decides the function (座標決定功能), the factors of awakening (菩提分 / *bodhipakkhiyā dhammā*), one entity under five names (定一體五名)

---

**Author:** Shi Huijing (釋慧鏡)
**Date:** June 2026
**License:** CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
**Version:** 1.0
**Series:** SAMĀDHI — *From the Pāli Jhāna to Silent Illumination and the Huatou*

---

## I. Posing the Question — *Should You Push, or Does Concentration Just Come?*

A dispute hangs unshakably over contemporary meditation circles: to enter "concentration" (*samādhi*), ought one to strive at focus, pulling the mind back to its object pass after pass, or ought one to let go, and let concentration surface of itself? One side says that without hard labour concentration never comes; the other says that whatever is "done" is no true concentration, and that the real thing shows itself only in the moment effort is set down. Both readings have sitting-experience to vouch for them, and both have lineages behind them, so the dispute over effort runs on year after year, neither side talking the other round.

This chapter does not propose to take a side on that axis of "effort or no effort." The previous chapter handled the question of "place" — where right concentration (the eighth factor of the noble eightfold path, *aṭṭhaṅgika magga*) stands along the whole of the path; and it left one question at its close for this chapter to carry: this same concentration, set among the seven awakening-factors (*satta bojjhaṅgā*), where does it stand, and how does it arise? Once that question is asked rightly, the deadlock over effort loosens — for it trades a question of operation, "how should I do it," for a question of structure, "what is it, and where does it come from."

Three common misreadings must first be cleared away.

The first takes the concentration awakening-factor for a deeper focus that can be willed directly into being — as if, with enough effort and enough endurance, one could simply "make" it.

The second takes the concentration awakening-factor for one factor among the seven that can be drawn off and cultivated alone — as if the seven were seven implements set side by side, of which one might pick out "concentration" to drill.

The third takes the concentration awakening-factor for nothing but a tautology of right concentration — as if the "concentration" of the seven awakening-factors and the "right concentration" of the eightfold path were merely the one word reshelved, with no difference between them.

None of the three is accurate. The concentration awakening-factor is not a state done directly by will, but the fruit that forms of itself once the foregoing factors have ripened in sequence and the mind has come to ease; it cannot be drawn off from the causal sequence of the seven and cultivated alone, because it is precisely what arises *held up* by the prior factors; and the same concentration, set in the table of the seven awakening-factors or in the table of the eightfold path, does not bear the same identity — as later sections show, serving as right concentration it spans the mundane and the supramundane, but serving as the concentration awakening-factor it is purely supramundane.

The proposition of this chapter can therefore be set thus: the concentration awakening-factor is not a deeper focus you achieve, but the fruit that arises of itself, held up by the foregoing factors, once those factors have ripened and the mind has come to ease — what makes it an "awakening-factor" lies not in how much effort you spent, but in where it is born and which way it faces.

A measure of restraint must be stated at the outset. What this chapter does is to describe *what* the concentration awakening-factor is and *how* it arises within the sequence — not to teach anyone *how to* produce concentration. This is a doctrinal, structural statement, not an operator's manual. That the discourses and treatises tell us out of what ripened conditions concentration is born is one thing; "manufacturing concentration by following the steps" is another, and the latter is exactly the red line this chapter means to draw. An over-energized mind cannot squeeze concentration out by redoubled effort — a point that comes clearest of all once the calming factors are in view.

---

## II. Concentration Sits Sixth — *The Order of the Seven Awakening-Factors*

To see clearly where concentration stands among the seven awakening-factors, one must first set the seven out. In order, they are: mindfulness, investigation of states, energy, rapture, tranquillity (*passaddhi*; the later treatises render it otherwise as "pliancy," 輕安 — see below), concentration, equanimity. Concentration (*samādhi*) sits sixth, with mindfulness, investigation, energy, rapture, and tranquillity before it, and equanimity, one factor, after.

A difference of wording too often passed over must be flagged at once. We speak today, by habit, of the "seven awakening-factors" and the "concentration awakening-factor" — the rendering fixed by the *Madhyama Āgama* (translated by Gautama Saṅghadeva) and the later treatises. But in the earliest-compiled *Saṃyukta Āgama*, Guṇabhadra's translation gives not "awakening-factor" (覺支) but "awakening-portion" (覺分) — mindfulness-portion, concentration-portion, equanimity-portion. The two name one and the same thing (*bojjhaṅga*); the rendering differs by a single Chinese character:

> ⚠ The first seam: the *Saṃyukta Āgama* renders it 覺分, the *Madhyama Āgama* and the treatises 覺支. This chapter's title keeps the now-standard "awakening-factor (覺支)," but wherever the *Saṃyukta* is quoted, its original character 覺分 is preserved. The reader must not back-fill the later 覺支 into Guṇabhadra's mouth, still less say "the *Saṃyukta Āgama* speaks of the seven 覺支" — what the *Saṃyukta* speaks of is the seven 覺分.

Concentration sits sixth: that is its place in the *enumeration*. The *Saṃyukta Āgama*, discourse 713, says it plainly — each of the seven awakening-portions "is wisdom, is full awakening, conduces and inclines to nibbāna," the concentration-portion among them:

> "There is concentration, and there is the sign of concentration. That concentration is the concentration awakening-portion — it is wisdom, is full awakening, conducing and inclining to nibbāna."[^1]

But "sitting sixth" is only concentration's *place*, not yet its *sequence*. Place is its number in the list; sequence is what it is born from, and what it gives rise to, in the order of cause and effect. The next section shows that concentration, sixth in the list, is the gathering-in point of the *causal* chain — the prior factors ripen, the mind comes to ease, and only then is concentration born. These two orderings must not be run together; and the reason the load-bearing image of this chapter is "sequence" and not merely "place" lies exactly here.

One more case of one character, two senses must be guarded against in advance. The seven awakening-factors share a single formula: each factor, in cultivation, is "dependent on seclusion, dependent on dispassion, dependent on cessation, ripening toward release" (*Saṃyukta Āgama*, discourse 729). The "release" toward which one ripens (向於捨) is *vossagga*, the relinquishment that slopes toward nibbāna — the shared orientation of all seven factors; it is emphatically not the seventh factor, the "equanimity awakening-factor" (*upekkhā*, the equanimity of even-mindedness). One Chinese character 捨, two referents: one the direction in which all the awakening-factors together incline, one the last item on the list. Reading the four-fold formula, one must see that "ripening toward release" names a direction, not an instruction to cultivate one's way through to the seventh factor.[^2]

Finally, the scope must be stated honestly. The seven awakening-factors are a complete structure of the path, each factor with its own sense, all dependently arisen; the full unfolding of that framework belongs to this series' Volume One, *Mindfulness* (NIAN) — mindfulness is the first of the seven awakening-factors, and from the fulfilment of mindfulness the rest open out, which is another paper's home ground. This chapter argues only about one of the factors, the concentration awakening-factor, and so it merely lists the seven by name and fixes "concentration sits sixth" as a locating scaffold, without expounding each factor in turn.

---

## III. Ripening — *How Concentration Arises*

Concentration sits sixth: that is its place in the list. But *how* concentration arises in the order of cause and effect is the core of this chapter. The *Saṃyukta Āgama*, discourse 810, sets out how mindfulness of breathing (in-and-out breathing) fulfils in sequence the four establishments of mindfulness, and how the four establishments fulfil in sequence the seven awakening-portions; and the passage in which it describes the arising of the concentration-portion is the most telling of all:

> "… the mind being gladdened, body and mind grow tranquil … body and mind being tranquil, one gains the ease of body and mind; having gained the ease of body and mind, one gains concentration. Then one cultivates the concentration awakening-portion; having cultivated it, the concentration awakening-portion is fulfilled. The concentration awakening-portion being fulfilled, greed and grief cease, and one gains the equanimity of even-mindedness. Then, by skilful means, one cultivates the equanimity awakening-portion."[^3]

What to watch in this passage is the causal run between the verbs: rapture gives rise to bodily-and-mental tranquillity, tranquillity to bodily-and-mental ease, and "having gained the ease of body and mind, one gains concentration" — ease gives rise to concentration. Concentration is not the first cause the practitioner grinds out of nothing by clenched will; it is the second-to-last fruit on this chain, growing out of the ease before it, an ease that has itself grown all the way up from tranquillity, from rapture, from the investigation and energy further back still. Concentration here is *undergone*, not *manufactured*.

A word too easily erased by modern renderings must be pinned here. The "tranquil / tranquillity" above is the Pāli *passaddhi* — the settling, the stilling, of body and mind. The *Saṃyukta Āgama* says 猗 / 猗息; the *Madhyama Āgama*'s discourse on the establishments of mindfulness says 息; the *Discourse on What Is the Purpose*, taken up below, says 止. These are all the original idiom of the Āgamas. The term we know today, "pliancy" (輕安), is Xuanzang's later coinage, made when he translated the Abhidharma treatises; in these Āgama passages, the word 輕安 does not appear. Reading the Āgama's causal chain, one must hold to the original 猗 / 息 / 止; "pliancy" enters only when one comes to the treatises' chapter on serenity. To back-fill "pliancy" into the Āgama's mouth is an anachronism.

The same causal run shows not only in the context of cultivating the breath. The *Madhyama Āgama*'s *Discourse on What Is the Purpose* starts from the keeping of the precepts and presses all the way to concentration:

> "Keeping the precepts has non-remorse for its purpose … non-remorse has gladness for its purpose … gladness has rapture for its purpose … (rapture gives rise to calm, calm gives rise to ease) … if there is ease, then one gains concentration of mind."[^4]

The starting point of this chain is virtue, its terminus concentration, with non-remorse, gladness, rapture, calm, and ease in between. What most repays attention is its tone: one who keeps the precepts "need not intend" — need not think, "let me not feel remorse"; non-remorse arises of itself along with the keeping of precepts. And one who has come to ease likewise need not form the intention "let me enter concentration" — "if there is ease, then one gains concentration of mind"; the mind settles of itself. The Pāli parallel (*Aṅguttara Nikāya* 11.1) puts the point more plainly still: one who keeps the precepts need not stir up the wish "may no remorse arise in me"; from non-remorse to gladness, to rapture, to tranquillity (*passaddhi*), to ease, to concentration, and on to knowing and seeing as it really is, all arise of themselves, in due sequence, "by natural law" (*dhammatā*). Such is the nature of things: the channel forms when the water has arrived.[^5]

The Pāli grammar testifies to this same sense. "The mind gains concentration" is, in the Pāli, *sukhino cittaṁ samādhiyati* — "for one at ease, the mind is concentrated." Here *samādhiyati* stands in the medio-passive voice: the mind is the recipient that "is concentrated," not the agent that "does the concentrating." A single verb in the medio-passive marks the whole direction of the matter unmistakably — concentration comes upon a mind already at ease, the way water flows into a channel already dug.[^6]

The image of the channel forming when the water arrives can now bear the weight of this chapter. The previous chapter spoke of "place," and that was static — where concentration ranks on the path, where it ranks among the seven. This chapter speaks of "sequence," and that is dynamic — how the prior factors ripen, joint by joint; how the mind passes from rapture to settledness, from settledness to ease; and how, the ease being full, concentration comes of itself. The channel is not concentration itself; the channel is virtue, is mindfulness, is investigation and energy, is rapture and tranquillity. Digging the channel is the work upstream; the flowing of the water is the fruit downstream. Once this "sequence" is understood, the dispute over effort finds its footing: effort there is, and it is spent on cultivating the prior factors — but concentration itself lies downstream in the sequence, a fruit held up into ripeness, not a thing wrung out directly by will. And this is just the red line this chapter must keep: concentration is not a thing the will can manufacture. To describe how it ripens into being is one matter; to teach anyone "how to make it ripen" is wholly another — and the latter, the moment it is uttered, smuggles the fruit back into an operable technique.

A note in passing: the *Saṃyukta Āgama*, discourse 715, says the "nutriment" that feeds the concentration-portion is the four jhānas — the four jhānas are the food of the concentration-portion. The depth-scale of the four jhānas was treated in detail in this volume's earlier chapter (P04) and is not re-walked here. It must be set down honestly that the Pāli tradition, speaking of the "nutriment" of the awakening-factors, gives the food of the concentration-factor otherwise (pointing to "the sign of serenity"), in wording that does not fully match the Chinese "four jhānas"; the difference of wording between the two traditions here is real, and this chapter does not force them into alignment but marks it faithfully.[^7]

---

## IV. A Factor of Calming — *Concentration between Agitation and Dullness*

Concentration arises from the ripening of the prior factors: that is the "sequence." But the seven awakening-factors give concentration one more, finer locating: it falls between agitation and dullness, and stands on the side that counters agitation in particular.

The *Saṃyukta Āgama*, discourse 714, puts it in fine detail. The mind has two deviations: one is "agitation" (restlessness, over-energized stirring), the other is "feebleness" (dullness, lowness, the failure to lift). To counter the two deviations, the seven awakening-factors are to be used by sides:

> "If an agitated mind arises, an agitated wavering of mind, to cultivate then the investigation factor, the energy factor, the rapture factor [would] increase its agitation … If a feeble mind arises, a feeble wavering, then is the time to cultivate investigation, energy, rapture [to rouse it]; … but to cultivate the tranquillity factor, the concentration factor, the equanimity factor — this is untimely, for it increases sloth."[^8]

Read smooth, the rule runs thus: when the mind is stirred (agitated), one should cultivate the three factors of tranquillity, concentration, and equanimity to calm it; when the mind is low (feeble), one should cultivate investigation, energy, and rapture to rouse it. Used the wrong way round — cultivating the rousing three when the mind is stirred, or the calming three when it is low — one only adds fuel to the fire, or piles snow upon frost. The discourse uses a small-fire simile: when the fire is still small and just catching, if you heap calming matter on it, "this is untimely," and you smother it out instead. As for the mindfulness factor, it serves at all times, aiding the mind whether stirred or sunk.

Concentration stands on this calming side. Its function is to settle an over-energized mind. And this dovetails tightly with the previous section: a restless, agitated mind, *just because* it is over-energized, is all the less able to have concentration forced out of it by redoubled effort — to cultivate concentration on such a mind, the discourse says outright, is "untimely." What concentration needs is for the tranquillity before it to soothe the stirring down first; only then is concentration born, within the ease. The discourse's rule of timing looks, on its face, like a technical instruction, but underneath it lies a point of doctrine: concentration cannot be seized out of turn; it must wait until the mind has been held up into place by calming.

In the treatises, this experience was systematized. The Sarvāstivāda's *Mahāvibhāṣā* divides the seven awakening-factors into two divisions: the calming division and the observing division. The calming division is the three factors of pliancy, concentration, and equanimity, which counter agitation of mind; the observing division is the three factors of investigation, energy, and rapture, which counter dullness of mind.[^9]

> ⚠ The second seam: note that the treatise here uses "pliancy" (輕安) — Xuanzang's rendering, named in the previous section. At the treatise level, "pliancy" is fitting — it was the treatises' word from the first; but the term must not be set back onto the Āgama's 猗 / 猗息. The same *passaddhi*: the Āgama says 猗, the treatise says 輕安, and the levels are to be kept apart.

The treatise's "calming division / observing division" is a handsome device of analysis, ruling the plain timing-experience of *Saṃyukta* discourse 714 into two symmetrical columns. But we must remember: what the discourse gives is the seed of sequence and timing; what the treatise gives is the grid of "one thing, treated two ways." The grid is a graduation the commentators drew later, not a checkpoint the Buddha set up in his day. This systematization is the commentators' achievement, and it is to be esteemed; but the grid need not be written back into the Āgama's mouth — *Saṃyukta* discourse 714 says only "when stirred cultivate these three, when feeble cultivate those three"; it has not yet the terminology of "calming division and observing division." The map is most useful; the map is not the terrain.

---

## V. One Concentration, Two Coordinates — *The Awakening-Factor Purely Supramundane, Right Concentration Spanning Both*

Now to the analytic core of this chapter: why does one and the same concentration come to bear a different identity when set among the seven awakening-factors and when set in the eightfold path?

Take first an adjudication of the *Abhidharmakośa*. Among the thirty-seven factors of awakening, the seven awakening-factors and the eight noble path-factors hold a peculiar standing:

> "The seven awakening-factors and the eight noble path-factors are exclusively supramundane, established only at the paths of cultivation and of seeing; for there are right view and the rest in the world too, yet those do not receive the name 'factor of the noble path.'"[^10]

That is: the awakening-factors and the path-factors are "exclusively supramundane," because they are established only at noble stations such as the path of seeing and the path of cultivation. Worldlings too have right view, and can enter concentration, but those are not called "factors of the noble path."

Yet the previous chapter has already shown that the "right concentration" of the eightfold path spans the worldly and the world-transcending — the worldling cultivating the four jhānas has right concentration too (mundane right concentration), while the concentration of the noble one entering the path is supramundane right concentration. Here a surface tension appears: the Kośa says "the eight noble path-factors are exclusively supramundane," yet right concentration plainly spans the mundane and the supramundane. How is this to be told?

The key lies in a determining criterion of the *Mahāvibhāṣā*. The commentators point out that whether a factor is judged purely supramundane depends on whether, taking the "awakening-factors" as the reference point, you analyze the path-factors *before* them or *after* them:

> "If the path-factors are analyzed after the awakening-factors, then the path-factors are exclusively supramundane, since the seven awakening-factors are exclusively supramundane; if the path-factors are analyzed before the awakening-factors, then the path-factors span the mundane and the supramundane."[^11]

In other words, the very same path-factor, according to which coordinate-table you set it in and which reference point you measure it by, can have its supramundane / mundane verdict come out reversed. This is not the concentration itself shifting back and forth; it is "the table you set it in" that decides its identity at the moment.

To understand how this is possible, a third statement of the Kośa must be added. The thirty-seven factors of awakening look like thirty-seven dharmas, but in fact "there are only ten in actual substance" — many seemingly distinct factors are, underneath, one and the same dharma. Concentration is the best example: one and the same concentration (*samādhi*), within the thirty-seven, serves as one "entity" under five "names" — the four bases of spiritual power (concentration being predominant there), the faculty of concentration, the power of concentration, the concentration awakening-factor, and right concentration. The single capacity of concentration runs through all five categories — bases of power, faculty, power, awakening-factor, path-factor — and each category issues it an identity.[^12]

Fold the three statements together, and the analytic signature of this chapter takes shape: one and the same concentration, serving as the right concentration of the eightfold path, spans the mundane and the supramundane (worldling and noble each having their own grade of right concentration); serving as the concentration awakening-factor of the seven, it is purely supramundane (since the awakening-factors are established only at the paths of seeing and cultivation). It is the coordinate that decides the function — not the concentration that changed, but the table it was set in.

This must be stated with care: the line just drawn — "as right concentration it spans the mundane, as the concentration awakening-factor it is purely supramundane" — is not the verbatim text of any one treatise. No single treatise-sentence reads "the concentration awakening-factor is purely supramundane while right concentration spans both." It is an inference synthesized from three treatise-statements — the awakening-factors are purely supramundane (Koša), the path-factors span the mundane and the supramundane (Vibhāṣā), concentration is a single entity under five names (Kośa) — each grounded in its own source, the conclusion emerging only when they are joined. This chapter says plainly that this is a synthesized inference, not the quotation of any one line; just as, when the previous chapter spoke of "the same four jhānas with two functions, isolated cultivation and entry onto the path," that too was a synthesis and not a single-sentence citation.

And this whole grid — "purely supramundane / spanning both," "calming division / observing division," "one entity under five names" — is the later systematization of the Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma. What the discourses give is sequence, is timing, is the plain description that concentration arises from ease; what the treatises give is the precise coordinate of "one thing, distinct functions." In reading the treatises, we read a map drawn with care by later hands; the map is most useful, but the map is, in the end, not the terrain. Do not take the commentators' graduation for a checkpoint the Buddha set up himself.

One thread, at the last, runs forward to a later chapter. The four-fold formula shared by the seven awakening-factors says that cultivating the concentration awakening-factor too is "dependent on seclusion, on dispassion, on cessation, ripening toward release." This means: the concentration awakening-factor, as an awakening-factor, faces from the first toward letting-go and cessation — it does not halt upon its own fruit, but is one link in a sequence pointing toward a further reach. Concentration, in the end, is not the terminus. Where it goes is the question this series' closing chapter (P31) must answer: concentration must in the end return to prajñā. Here only a single stroke is set, not unfolded.

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## VI. A Conversation with Three Modern Voices, and the Conclusion

Return to the opening dispute over effort, and this chapter can now give it an answer. Let three contemporary interlocutors come forward first.

Rupert Gethin, in his study of the thirty-seven factors of awakening, reads the whole set as a "developmental organism" — the thirty-seven are not thirty-seven implements set side by side, but a living structure of mutual conditioning and mutual ripening, the seven awakening-factors in particular being one developmental sequence within it, in which concentration and wisdom co-arise. This framework of "the path as organism" the chapter takes over whole — it is precisely the doctrinal ground on which the causal chain above, and "one entity under five names," can be said to hold. But on top of his sequence the chapter lays one further claim he need not have spelled out: one and the same concentration, according to which coordinate-table it is set in, shifts its supramundane / mundane identity accordingly — the coordinate decides the function. This layer is the chapter's continuation of the "organism" frame.

Bhikkhu Bodhi, in his introduction to the *Saṃyutta Nikāya*'s connected discourses on the awakening-factors, draws particular attention to the rule of cultivating by side according to agitation or dullness: rouse the low mind with the three rousing factors, calm the stirred mind with the three calming factors. This rule the chapter acknowledges as the most classical Theravāda warrant for "concentration belongs to the calming side, countering restlessness." But the chapter reads it one layer deeper than a technical instruction: that to cultivate concentration on an agitated mind is "untimely" is exactly what proves concentration cannot be forced — it must wait until the prior factors have held it up into place; it cannot be seized out of turn. Beneath the timing-rule lies a point of doctrine.

As for the contemporary dispute over effort itself — running on unspent in meditation circles, one side holding that concentration is striven out, the other that it comes of itself when one lets go — the chapter's answer is this: each side has hold of one end of the sequence. Effort is real, but it is spent upstream — the cultivation of the prior factors, the keeping of precepts, energy, mindfulness, investigation, does indeed take effort; concentration, though, lies downstream, a fruit held up by the prior factors into arising (that medio-passive "the mind is concentrated" says just this). So it is not an either-or of "effort or no effort," but a question of "sequence": cultivate the causes with diligence, and the fruit ripens of itself. Diligence in planting the cause; forcing the fruit, labour wasted.[^13]

To gather it up, what this chapter argues divides into three layers.

First, doctrinally: the concentration awakening-factor is the sixth of the seven awakening-factors; it sits sixth in the list (place), but in the order of cause and effect it is the culminating fruit that arises of itself once the prior factors have ripened and the mind has come to ease (sequence); and the same concentration, as the right concentration of the eightfold path, spans the mundane and the supramundane, while as the concentration awakening-factor of the seven it is purely supramundane — the coordinate decides the function. Along the way, five redlines must be kept: mindfulness is the first factor, concentration the sixth, the one a proximate cause and the other a remote fruit — mindfulness is, in the end, not concentration; the focus within concentration is not the mindfulness of the four establishments; deeper concentration is not nearer liberation; right concentration is not an isolated technique, but needs the support of the seven factors (and indeed of the whole path); and the redline most proper to this chapter — concentration is not a thing the will can manufacture, but arises of itself out of the ripening of the prior factors.

Second, as to the reader's own situation on the path: if you have ever wrestled, on the cushion, with an agitated mind, finding that the harder you pushed the less it would settle, this chapter's doctrine may be some small comfort — it was not that you tried too little, but that you spent your effort in the wrong place. To cultivate concentration by force on an over-energized mind is, as the discourse said long ago, "untimely." What truly bears the load is upstream: the purity of virtue, the gladdening of the mind, the arrival of rapture and tranquillity into place. The water arrived, the channel formed, and concentration comes of itself. Effort is the gardener's business, not the fruit's.

Third, a question left for a later chapter. This chapter has told how concentration *arises*; it has not yet told what concentration *leaves behind*. That gate — "secluded from sensuality, from unwholesome states" — and the hindrances it clears: sensual desire, ill-will, dullness-and-drowsiness, restlessness-and-remorse, doubt — what is their structure? And why are the seven awakening-factors precisely their antidote? That is the matter of the next chapter (P08). And further off, once concentration has ripened joint by joint, been fulfilled, and inclined toward release — where then will it carry the practitioner? That light of prajñā to which concentration must in the end return is left for this volume's closing chapter to tell.

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## Notes

[^1]: *Saṃyukta Āgama*, fascicle 27, discourse 713, "there is concentration, and there is the sign of concentration; that concentration is the concentration awakening-portion — it is wisdom, is full awakening, conducing and inclining to nibbāna," translated by Guṇabhadra, Taishō vol. 2, No. T0099. ⚠ This translation reads 覺分 (awakening-portion) throughout, the same *bojjhaṅga* as the later 覺支.

[^2]: *Saṃyukta Āgama*, fascicle 27, discourse 729, "cultivating the mindfulness awakening-portion dependent on seclusion, on dispassion, on cessation, ripening toward release … and so on to cultivating the equanimity awakening-portion dependent on seclusion, on dispassion, on cessation, ripening toward release," Taishō vol. 2, No. T0099. The Pāli parallel formula is *vivekanissita virāganissita nirodhanissita vossaggapariṇāmin* (*Aṅguttara Nikāya* 4.14). The "release" of "ripening toward release" is *vossagga* (the relinquishment that slopes toward nibbāna), not the seventh factor, the "equanimity awakening-factor" (*upekkhā*, even-minded equanimity); one character 捨, two senses — to be kept distinct.

[^3]: *Saṃyukta Āgama*, fascicle 29, discourse 810, "having gained the ease of body and mind, one gains concentration; then one cultivates the concentration awakening-portion," in the passage on how mindfulness of breathing fulfils in sequence the four establishments of mindfulness, and the four establishments the seven awakening-portions, Taishō vol. 2, No. T0099.

[^4]: *Madhyama Āgama*, fascicle 10, the *Discourse on What Is the Purpose* (《何義經》), "keeping the precepts has non-remorse for its purpose … if there is ease, then one gains concentration of mind," translated by Gautama Saṅghadeva, Taishō vol. 1, No. T0026. This discourse is the Chinese parallel of the Pāli *Aṅguttara Nikāya* 11.1 (*Kimatthiya*); its "need not intend" (不須思) expresses the natural sequence, arising without deliberate intention.

[^5]: *Aṅguttara Nikāya* 11.1 *Kimatthiya*: one who keeps the precepts need not deliberately form the intention "may no remorse arise in me"; from non-remorse, gladness, rapture, tranquillity (*passaddhi*), ease, concentration, on to knowing and seeing as it really is, disenchantment, dispassion, and liberation, all arise of themselves in due sequence, "by natural law" (*dhammatā*). The synonymous "it need not be done by will" is also found at *Aṅguttara Nikāya* 10.2 / 11.2 (the sense carried here by AN 11.1 together with the *Discourse on What Is the Purpose*'s "need not intend"; AN 10.2/11.2 paraphrased, not embedded). Pāli per the Mahāsaṅgīti / Sujato edition.

[^6]: *Aṅguttara Nikāya* 6.10: *sukhino cittaṁ samādhiyati* ("for one at ease, the mind is concentrated"). *samādhiyati* stands in the medio-passive voice: the mind is the recipient that "is concentrated," not the agent that does it; the grammar itself attests that concentration is undergone, not manufactured. Pāli per the Mahāsaṅgīti / Sujato edition.

[^7]: *Saṃyukta Āgama*, fascicle 27, discourse 715, the "nutriment" (食) of the concentration awakening-portion being the four jhānas, Taishō vol. 2, No. T0099. The depth-scale of the four jhānas is detailed in this volume's P04 and is not restated here. The Pāli tradition, speaking of the "nutriment" of the awakening-factors, gives the food of the concentration-factor as "the sign of serenity" (*samathanimitta*), differing in wording from the Chinese "four jhānas"; the chapter reports both faithfully and does not force them into alignment.

[^8]: *Saṃyukta Āgama*, fascicle 27, discourse 714, "if an agitated mind arises … to cultivate then the tranquillity, concentration, and equanimity factors — this is untimely, for it increases sloth," together with the small-fire simile, "as a small fire one wishes to make blaze," Taishō vol. 2, No. T0099. When stirred, cultivate tranquillity, concentration, equanimity (the calming triad); when feeble, cultivate investigation, energy, rapture (the rousing triad); the mindfulness awakening-portion assists at all times.

[^9]: *Mahāvibhāṣā*, fascicle 95, dividing the seven awakening-factors into a calming division (pliancy, concentration, equanimity, countering agitation of mind) and an observing division (investigation, energy, rapture, countering dullness of mind), translated by Xuanzang, Taishō vol. 27, No. T1545. "Pliancy" (輕安) is the new rendering of Xuanzang's treatise translations, naming the same *passaddhi* as the Āgama's 猗 / 猗息 — treatise-layer versus sūtra-layer Chinese.

[^10]: *Abhidharmakośa-bhāṣya*, fascicle 25, the *Chapter on the Noble Persons*, "the seven awakening-factors and the eight noble path-factors are exclusively supramundane, established only at the paths of cultivation and of seeing," translated by Xuanzang, Taishō vol. 29, No. T1558.

[^11]: *Mahāvibhāṣā*, fascicle 95, "if the path-factors are analyzed after the awakening-factors, then the path-factors are exclusively supramundane … if the path-factors are analyzed before the awakening-factors, then the path-factors span the mundane and the supramundane," translated by Xuanzang, Taishō vol. 27, No. T1545. The same path-factor's mundane / supramundane verdict reverses with the reference-coordinate (the determining criterion, 決定相 / frame-dependence).

[^12]: *Abhidharmakośa-bhāṣya*, fascicle 25, the thirty-seven factors of awakening reducing to "only ten in actual substance"; concentration (*samādhi*), as a single entity, serves under five names — the four bases of spiritual power (concentration being predominant), the faculty of concentration, the power of concentration, the concentration awakening-factor, and right concentration — translated by Xuanzang, Taishō vol. 29, No. T1558.

[^13]: The bridge "mindfulness as the first of the seven awakening-factors, opening into the rest" is best represented in contemporary scholarship by Bhikkhu Anālayo's work on the establishments of mindfulness (*satipaṭṭhāna*) leading into the awakening-factors (*bojjhaṅga*). Mindfulness is the first factor, concentration the sixth — a proximate cause versus a remote fruit; the very list-order of the seven awakening-factors already entails the distinction "mindfulness is not concentration." The full treatment of the mindfulness awakening-factor belongs to this series' Volume One, *Mindfulness* (NIAN).

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## References

### Buddhist Canon (Taishō originals)

- *Saṃyukta Āgama* (《雜阿含經》), translated by Guṇabhadra (Liu Song), Taishō vol. 2, No. T0099. Fascicle 27 (discourses 713, 714, 715, 729), fascicle 29 (discourse 810). Note that this translation reads 覺分 (awakening-portion) throughout, naming the same *bojjhaṅga* as the later translations' 覺支.
- *Madhyama Āgama* (《中阿含經》), translated by Gautama Saṅghadeva (Eastern Jin), Taishō vol. 1, No. T0026. Fascicle 10, the *Discourse on What Is the Purpose* (《何義經》, the Chinese parallel of the Pāli *Aṅguttara Nikāya* 11.1).
- *Abhidharmakośa-bhāṣya* (《阿毘達磨俱舍論》), translated by Xuanzang (Tang), Taishō vol. 29, No. T1558. Fascicle 25, the *Chapter on the Noble Persons*.
- *Abhidharma-mahāvibhāṣā-śāstra* (《阿毘達磨大毘婆沙論》), translated by Xuanzang (Tang), Taishō vol. 27, No. T1545. Fascicle 95.

### Pāli Parallels

> The Pāli texts below are cited as parallels; the body takes its doctrine from the Chinese, and embeds none of them verbatim except where marked CC0.

- *Aṅguttara Nikāya* 11.1 (*Kimatthiya*); AN 4.14; AN 6.10; AN 10.2 / 11.2. *Saṃyutta Nikāya* 46, the connected discourses on the awakening-factors (the nutriment of the factors, the fire-simile; the Chinese parallel is at *Saṃyukta Āgama*, fascicle 27). Pāli per the Mahāsaṅgīti / Sujato edition.

### Modern Scholarship

> Publication details for the works below await final verification; the body takes only the gist of each position and quotes none of them verbatim.

- Gethin, Rupert. *The Buddhist Path to Awakening*. (The thirty-seven factors of awakening as a mutually conditioned, developmental organism; pages and edition to be verified.)
- Bodhi, Bhikkhu. Introduction to the connected discourses on the awakening-factors (*Saṃyutta Nikāya* 46). (Position to be verified.)
- Anālayo, Bhikkhu. Work on the establishments of mindfulness leading into the awakening-factors. (Titles and pages to be verified.)

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## Cross-References

- **Inherits from:** P06, *Right Concentration as a Path-Factor* (which fixed the "place" of right concentration on the noble eightfold path, and left at its close the question this chapter takes up — where the same concentration stands among the seven awakening-factors, and how it arises); the redlines "mindfulness is not concentration," "the focus within concentration is not satipaṭṭhāna mindfulness," "deeper is not nearer to liberation," and "right concentration is not an isolated technique" are carried over and here re-grounded in the discourses.
- **Points toward:** P08 (the five hindrances as what jhāna clears — "secluded from sensuality, from unwholesome states" named here once as the gate, handed on without unfolding the hindrances). The full framework of the seven awakening-factors belongs to Volume One, *Mindfulness* (NIAN); this chapter supplies only a minimal locating scaffold and does not expound it.
- **Long-range lock:** the volume's closing chapter (P31) redeems the question that even the concentration awakening-factor, ripened and fulfilled, is not the terminus — inclining "toward release," it points beyond itself, and concentration ultimately returns to prajñā. This chapter keeps to "how-it-arises," and does not unfold "this too is empty" here.

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*Paper:* SAMADHI-P07 · *The Concentration Factor among the Seven Awakening-Factors* · **SAMĀDHI · Part II · The Āgama View**
*Author:* 釋慧鏡 (Shi Huijing) · *Project:* 指月 / Pointing-at-the-Moon · *Series:* The Six Practice Gates (六行門)
*License:* CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
*CBETA collation:* Citations from the *Saṃyukta Āgama* (T0099, fascicles 27 / 29), the *Madhyama Āgama* (T0026, fascicle 10), the *Abhidharmakośa-bhāṣya* (T1558, fascicle 25), and the *Mahāvibhāṣā* (T1545, fascicle 95) verified against the CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka. Pāli references (AN 11.1, AN 4.14, AN 6.10; SN 46 named as parallel) follow Bhikkhu Sujato's CC0 SuttaCentral edition.
*Repository:* https://github.com/pointing-at-the-moon/six-practice-gates